Turning Kachchativu issue into another Kashmir

It was a matter of time before the upcoming general election campaign rhetoric in India was to spill over to Sri Lanka. This time it was no less a persona than its Prime Minister who obliged with his choir of senior ministers in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) joining in singing from the same hymn sheet.

It was a marked departure from the usual. Normally, it is the Tamil Nadu politicians who use the 'Sri Lanka card' for electioneering. This time it has come from the Centre itself.

Snubbed by the southern parties that have refused to join in an electoral alliance with the BJP, the ruling party has dusted off old archival material relating to a 1974 bilateral agreement between India and Sri Lanka over the sovereignty of the islet of Kachchathivu and slammed the Opposition Congress Party and the Tamil Nadu regional party, the DMK for it.

Regardless of the 'Neighbourhood First' policy it otherwise professes, India's Foreign Minister made his way to the BJP headquarters wearing the party hat rather than his ministerial hat to give a news conference early one morning this week following his Prime Minister's tweet over what the PM called was the 'callousness' of the Congress/DMK combine over the Kachchathivu agreement. The Minister gave his own version of history selectively quoting speeches from yesteryear to argue his brief – slamming the long departed Nehrus and the DMK leaders for what, according to him, amounted to treachery on their part.

He referred to India 'ceding' Kachch to Sri Lanka. There was nothing to cede. It was conceded after extensive and exhaustive negotiations over several years, that the two countries had agreed to accept the 1921 territorial demarcation line where the islet fell well on the Sri Lankan side. In doing so, the Minister not only insulted his predecessors in office, both the senior officials and politicians but gave the impression that the then Indian Government gave Kachchathivu on a platter to Sri Lanka. In the process he lost sight of his own Government's stance on a 'rules-based world order', touted at the recent G20 summit and elsewhere.

There are reams of documents surely in his ministry of all the possible claims the Indian Government made for Kachch then; the efforts of then Premier Mrs. Indira Gandhi to secure even a small part of the islet, to pacify the Madras Government of the day; later suggesting joint ownership only to succumb to the weight of evidence against its claim due to the production by Sri Lanka of historical maps and records, some collected from Tamil Nadu, Goa and Mumbai and on the basis of dispassionate examination. He didn't touch on any of these.

The Minister rattled off statistics showing the number of Indian fishermen and fishing boats that have been detained by Sri Lanka in the past five years to pin the blame on the 1974 agreement on the sovereignty of Kachch and a subsequent 1976 agreement on fishing rights. It was a self-admission that these fishermen and their boats were violating those operative treaties – and in the past five years, when his party was in Government.

It was also an admission that all the years of talks on the continuing fishing disputes in the waters around Kachch in Sri Lankan territorial waters are bogus discussions as far as his Government is concerned. That their only concern is the livelihood of the fishermen on their side of the IMBL (International Maritime Boundary Line), not the livelihood of the Sri Lankan fishermen in North Sri Lanka about whom they shed tears from time to time demanding Colombo see to their self-respect and welfare.

Whether this is all election rhetoric and posturing for the Tamil Nadu elections that begin later this month is to be seen. The Indian Foreign Minister stopped short of outlining his Government's intentions other than saying a 'solution' must be found.

What transpires from the latest comments by the Indian Centre is that there seems little sacrosanct value attached to its international treaties. Pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept), is the oldest principle in international law. Ten to 50 years later, to question treaties its own Government had signed with sovereign countries is a dangerous precedent. Particularly when the Indian Government of today is pressing Sri Lanka to sign a number of agreements with it for the future.

Both, the Indian PM and EAM waited till the high-level Sri Lankan delegation that visited New Delhi last week to discuss a number of projects the Indian Government was keen on implementing in Sri Lanka on the basis of 'connectivity' had left, to make these toxic statements on Kachchativu.

Only last week, we wrote of India's latest moves to make a bid to explore for minerals on the seabed in a patch of the ocean that Sri Lanka has already claimed under the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas.

As India pursues an aggressive foreign policy, 'Why Bharat Matters' is significant for Sri Lanka. In his 2024 book with that title, the Indian Foreign Minister makes it clear that: “A nationalist outlook will naturally produce a nationalist diplomacy, and it is something that the world will need to get used to”.

Meanwhile, the seas around the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar on Sri Lanka's side very soon will be a Dead Sea with the rape of its marine resource due to over-fishing by bottom trawling; pair trawling and IUU (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated) practices.

During the long and extensive negotiations over Kachchativu, one of the great positives for Sri Lanka was the legal expertise and diplomatic skills of its officials at the time, and above all, the bipartisanship shown by the Sri Lankan political leadership of Dudley Senanayake (whose Government initiated the negotiations) and Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike (who concluded it).

Like in the case of what later became known as the SirimaShastri Pact on the repatriation of stateless Sri Lankans of recent Indian origin, a key element was the communications between the Head of Government and the Opposition Leader with the national interest being paramount for both irrespective of domestic political differences.

While Indian politicians wash their political linen in public, the Sri Lankan polity needs to be on high alert to any sea change in foreign policy coming from across the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar.